


Crusaders after Peril

by tobysbees



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Cancer Arc, F/M, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 19:58:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4638291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tobysbees/pseuds/tobysbees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder attempts to make the hospital stays a little easier on Scully.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crusaders after Peril

Scully had drifted off to sleep, but just barely. Her mind had just shifted into the realm of soft dreams, but it was still holding on to the world around her. It was still aware of the sounds of nurse’s shoes or medical gurneys squeaking by her room, still aware of the way the light from the fluorescents seemed to dim as someone would walk past.

I am so tired, seemed to be her last conscious thought as she drifted off, an unusual one as she was not one for complaining.

The cancer was taking a toll on her. As a doctor, she understood the effect chemotherapy would have on her body. In a clinical sense, she expected this, she knew the side-effects that everyone went through but still – on some emotional level, she expected something different. An easier fight? She knew it was illogical, but somehow she felt like knowing the science of it all would spare her some suffering.

The lights seemed to dim from the hall, the fluorescents no longer bright in her eyes, as though someone was standing in the doorway. The change in the room roused Scully from her shallow sleep, and she saw Mulder standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame, arms tucked behind him.

He stood there silent. A forced smile curled on his lips as he waited for her to lean on her elbows to prop herself up against her pillow, a task she accomplished with difficulty. She knew it wasn’t easy for him to watch either.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said, still at the door as though he was waiting for an invitation to come in.

“I could use the company.” Scully deflected from her exhaustion, from the fact that she was always sleeping, from the fact that she barely felt like herself anymore. Talking to Mulder was something she needed; she was already starting to feel like herself.

He stepped into the room and settled into the chair beside her, setting his hands in his lap and along with them an object of familiarity to Scully.

“What’s that?” Scully asked looking into his lap. She already knew the answer, she knew exactly what he was holding, but she needed him to affirm what she thought she was seeing.

“Just a little something to keep you occupied,” he smiled at her and brought the black faded cover up to her arms. She accepted the book and placed it gently in her lap.

As Scully’s fingers traced the spine of her father’s copy of Moby Dick, she felt a lump forming against her throat. She looked back at Mulder but she was speechless, while he sat there smiling. The surprise seemed to have the affect he intended.

“I stopped by your apartment on the way here, because I thought you could use –”

“Thank you, Mulder,” she managed, cutting off any attempt at a long-winded apology for entering her apartment. He didn’t need to apologize for that.

He nodded and didn’t say another word. He just watched as she looked back at the book and pulled it against her chest, leaning her head down as if to inhale it’s musky memories and allow them to transport her back to a time when she was well, when her father was alive, and when she was young and carefree and holding this very book for the first time.

With extreme care, she peeled apart the pages at a random point and pulled the book away from herself. She could feel Mulder’s gaze as she did this, but she felt so comfortable that he could have not been sitting there at all and it wouldn’t have made a difference.

Her eyes narrowed on the page in front of her, but she struggled to focus on the words. Starbuck was no cru… Her eyes shifted out of focus and the words on the page began to intersect with one another. They are crossing where they were not meant to, almost as they did when she stayed up too late past her bedtime reading these passages after her father declared, “That’s enough for tonight, Starbuck,” and headed to his own bed.

She blinked hard, and attempted to refocus her eyes. Starbuck was no crusader aft… the words began to dance on the page again and Scully was too tired to keep them still. A deep breath, and another attempt. Starbuck was no… But it was no use. Her eyes refused to focus, her mind refused to keep the words tethered to the page, and for a moment, she allowed herself to feel like her cancer had already beaten her.

She swallowed, fighting the lump forming in her throat. Growing increasingly conscious of Mulder’s presence in the room, she fought her tears with all the strength she could muster. Still, she could feel herself slipping

Then she felt warmth.

“Scoot over, Scully.”

He was beside her in the tiny hospital bed, delicately shifting her over to give himself some room and then easing her against him. She felt the warmth of his body blanket her gently, and took comfort in him. She surrendered the book to him, and appreciated how uncomfortable this position must be for him. He sat on the edge of the bed, with one of his long legs dangling off the side, but he didn’t complain. He pulled the book into his lap with one arm, the other still wrapped around her shoulder, and began to read.

“Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon all mortally practical occasions.”

If Mulder was at all upset by Scully’s exhaustion, his voice did not betray him. He read with a calm enthusiasm, voice rising and falling with the emotion of the characters on the page. Scully rested against the soft cotton of his shirt and let tears quietly stream down her cheeks as Mulder continued to read.

“Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in this business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted. Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after sun-down; nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much persisted in fighting him.”

Exhaustion kept pulling at Scully, but she felt better now. Ahab was there for her, reading Moby Dick to her. For the first time since her diagnosis, it didn’t matter if she was present in that moment or if her mind was inhabiting moments of her past. Either way, everything felt like it was going to be okay.

“For, thought Starbuck, I am here in this critical ocean to kill whales for my living, and not to be killed by them for theirs; and that hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck well knew.”

Mulder’s voice cracks, but he keeps reading. Scully drifts to sleep against his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> A special thanks to [ leslieknopedanascully](http://leslieknopedanascully.tumblr.com/)'s brain for coming up with this headcanon and also for her encouraging response when I told her I was writing it.


End file.
